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Want to Know the Secret Behind Identifying the Best Candidates?

Want to Know the Secret Behind Identifying the Best Candidates?

Believe it or not, one of the primary causes behind poor hires lies in the initial selection process where the two most common problems are either not having any recruitment and selection strategy at all, or the belief that one selection strategy can be applied to every single vacancy within the business regardless of the role in question.

The responsibilities and competencies sought after in a finance director are totally different to those of an executive assistant. Similarly the skills and traits found in a top performing sales manager vary immensely from those in a software engineer. So why then do so many hiring managers feel that simply applying the same selection process for any vacancy will result in a perfect match?

Regardless of the role you are recruiting for, the overall selection framework should typically be the same. It’s the selection criteria that will need to differ if you want to hire the best people into your team. Actually identifying the most suitable talent may seem obvious. But it is easy to make mistakes along the way; and these errors can be very expensive if the wrong person is brought into the team.

Remember you are not simply looking at someone’s ability to get a job in your business. You are looking at someone’s ability to do (and ideally excel and therefore remain in) the job in question. In order to distinguish between this subtlety, as a hiring manager you need to ensure that you assess all applicants against their past behaviour – as this is the best way to determine future performance. You should also consider creating a tailored performance profile for each individual role – a series of prioritised performance objectives including specific results and pre-determined time frames. More importantly ask each candidate going for a particular role exactly the same set of questions. By doing this you will be able to compare each of the applicants’ answers to determine who is in fact the best fit for the role.